Why do we tend judge our feelings, categorising them as good or bad, positive or negative, and is this actually a useful way to deal with them? Here I explore how paradoxical the real world of feelings is....

This is a short reflection on a niggling intuition about whether there is convergence in the start-up ecosystem, possibly influenced by the proliferation of incubators and accelerators run by established organisations and universities and their cultures. What effect is this having on the entrepreneur of today?

In my first piece about rhythm being an untapped dimension in coaching and one that, for me, was born out of a domain full of speed and risk, it follows that what I do in coaching has to do with rhythm. I help my clients to find better rhythms, of course, but what about me? And:

What does this mean?

What is my relationship to these rhythms? And;

Where does the knowledge come from to make use of it in coaching?

I wanted to explore how rhythm as a fundamental quality of human nature emerges in the coaching context.

A few nights ago I caught the recent BBC documentary on the culture within the British Cycling world-class programme. To me the whole thing reflects how unchecked bias can corrupt leadership and culture. Here I question how, in this instance, it seems to have been driven by fear and insecurity and whether it's now time to reconsider the coaching approaches being employed in elite programmes.

Business systems and processes are there to support you and your people to do better work. In this post, I examine how not to forget the human when designing systems and processes for your business and scale up.

This is a continuation of my story about finding a new way of coaching which unbeknownst to me drew me in to begin living in the paradigm of systematic correspondence. This is a way of thinking and being that has really gotten under my skin. It's of a distinctly Chinese flavour, mostly influenced by my love of Tai Chi Chuan.

It's part of a series of articles published on The Good Coach which is all about coaches sharing their practitioner experience.

In this piece I explore how workplace wellbeing programmes could do with a shake-up based in employee experience and how this requires a rethink and change at the very top - in leadership and senior management.

A quick societal review tells us that there is quite a lot of anger around in the world right now. There are rifts of conflicting opposites, each side of which mounts up on a parapet, face-to-face, shouting as loudly as possible.

(This was first published as a guest blog post on techspark.co on 3rd February 2017)

Unsurprisingly, stress is something that I come across a lot in my line of work, coaching business leaders, entrepreneurs, and athletes in extreme sport. They tend to be under a lot of pressure, a lot of the time, of course.

However, most of my clients wouldn’t necessarily admit to suffering from stress, even if I suggested it to them. Is this because they’re denying their reality, lacking in awareness, or could it perhaps be more nuanced than this?

(This was first published as a guest blog post on TechSpark.co on 5th January 2017).

Delegation and how to do it successfully is a perennial problem in business. I would be surprised to find anyone who hasn’t found it a challenge at some point in their working lives. In my executive coaching work, I find it to be particularly problematic in smaller, entrepreneurial start-up companies, especially when they’re growing.

As I a came off a telephone call with my client I didn’t feel very good. I had a rising sense of panic derived from a big dose of self-criticism and a mixture of other feelings all rolled into one: inadequacy, shame, embarrassment, sadness and hurt but at the same time this was tempered by some relief and elation.

I sat for a few minutes in this really rather uncomfortable space to consider what might be going on and then texted my client to thank him for his feedback. Like it or not, when I reflected on what had happened it was a really important development, not just for me in a coaching context, but also for the coaching relationship with my client.

All rolled into one, I’d ended up feeling pretty vulnerable in this coaching context.

So I went on a search to find out about the subject of vulnerability in executive coaching and leadership development..I did some thinking..here's what I came to.

A little while ago I was watching an athlete batter himself both physically and mentally trying to complete a series of new tricks for a film piece. It was pretty extreme. A few days later I saw someone else battle their fear to be able to do a pretty dangerous climatic trick for their new short film.

Not that any of my clients would use the term, but since it is much more in popular usage, it made me reflect on the nature of resilience, especially in terms of its use in business as well as wider afield in personal development.